NGINX usage
How to use NGINX as a web server, reverse proxy, load balancer, and HTTP cache.
Add new website
To create a new website, you can create a new configuration file.
The place of configuration files is different between default and official repositories.
- Default repository (1.22.4):
/etc/nginx/sites-available/ - Official repository (1.26.0):
/etc/nginx/conf.d/
To know your version, you can use this command:
sudo nginx -vINFO
With the default repository (1.22.4), you need to create a symbolic link to sites-enabled to activate the domain.
sudo ln -s /etc/nginx/sites-available/my-website /etc/nginx/sites-enabledFor the official repository, you don't need to create a symbolic link, just create a new file in conf.d directory.
Here we will see how to create a new domain with the official repository.
sudo vim /etc/nginx/conf.d/my-website.confserver {
listen 80;
server_name my-website.com www.my-website.com;
location / {
root /var/www/my-website;
index index.html;
}
}Create a new directory for the website
sudo mkdir /var/www/my-website
sudo chown -R $USER:nginx /var/www/my-website
sudo chmod -R 755 /var/www/my-websiteCreate a new HTML file
echo "<html><body><h1>Hello World</h1></body></html>" | sudo tee /var/www/my-website/index.htmlReload NGINX
sudo nginx -t
sudo service nginx reloadIf you have this output, everything is fine, otherwise you will have some infos to fix it:
nginx: the configuration file /etc/nginx/nginx.conf syntax is ok
nginx: configuration file /etc/nginx/nginx.conf test is successfulSSL and HTTPS
To use SSL, you need to have a certificate. You can use Let's Encrypt to have a free certificate, to install it you have a guide here: SSL Certbot.
You will have some questions to answer, and after that, you will have a certificate. Certbot will update your configuration files to use HTTPS.
Automatic HTTP to HTTPS
server {
# ...
listen [::]:443 ssl ipv6only=on; # managed by Certbot
listen 443 ssl; # managed by Certbot
ssl_certificate /etc/letsencrypt/live/bookshelves.ink/fullchain.pem; # managed by Certbot
ssl_certificate_key /etc/letsencrypt/live/bookshelves.ink/privkey.pem; # managed by Certbot
include /etc/letsencrypt/options-ssl-nginx.conf; # managed by Certbot
ssl_dhparam /etc/letsencrypt/ssl-dhparams.pem; # managed by Certbot
}
server {
if ($host = bookshelves.ink) {
return 301 https://$host$request_uri;
} # managed by Certbot
listen 80;
listen [::]:80;
server_name bookshelves.ink;
return 404; # managed by Certbot
}sudo nginx -t
sudo service nginx reloadIf you have an error, you can see the logs in /var/log/nginx/error.log.
Host Node.js application
To host PHP application or HTML files, you can use NGINX, but if you want to host a Node.js application, you can use PM2 to manage your application with NGINX as a reverse proxy.
You can see a guide here: Node.js with PM2.
Remove domain
To remove a domain, you can delete the configuration file with official repository and remove the symbolic link with default repository.
sudo rm /etc/nginx/conf.d/my-website.confsudo nginx -t
sudo service nginx reloadPHP and NGINX
If you want to use PHP with NGINX, you can see the guide here: PHP with NGINX.
Into a NGINX configuration file, you can use PHP with php-fpm.
location ~ \.php$ {
include fastcgi_params;
fastcgi_pass unix:/var/run/php/php8.2-fpm.sock;
fastcgi_param SCRIPT_FILENAME $document_root$fastcgi_script_name;
fastcgi_param SCRIPT_NAME $fastcgi_script_name;
}Here, PHP 8.2 is used as an example. You can replace it with the version you want. You can have multiple PHP versions on your server and use it with different websites.
Check if the configuration is correct
sudo nginx -t
sudo service nginx reloadWARNING
If you change PHP version, it can be missing some extensions, if your app display an error about extension check this guide